I received a message recently from a client that one of their friends was sending the same email message over and over again. After a bit of investigation it turned out exactly as I thought – the friend is using Microsoft Outlook. Over the years I have seen many instances of Microsoft Outlook repeatedly sending out multiple copies of the same email. There are a number of different things that can cause this, but luckily they are all fairly easy to fix.
1) The most common cause of this problem is that there are too many items in the “Sent” folder. It sounds odd, but Microsoft Outlook can only handle a limited number of items in the Sent folder. If the program reaches its limit it cannot move files from the Outbox to Sent. When that happens it will continually resend any email that remains in the Outbox folder. The fix is simple: every once in a while you need to go in and clean out those old sent emails. If you really need to have a record of the emails you sent two years ago, archive them off to an external file so you still have them, but get them out of Sent. While you are at it, also remember to empty the trash.
2) If somehow there are multiple copies of Outlook running. Do you see more than one copy of Outlook in your task manager? If so, try closing all of them and then only opening one. Or, just restart your machine. If you are consistently having the multiple send problem though, this is unlikely to be the cause.
3) If the send/receive interval is very short, like one minute, and you are sending a very large file that takes over that interval to send then Outlook may start sending the email a second time. In this case the fix is to increase the send / receive interval. Note that this is usually only encountered when sending extremely large attachments like photos.
4) Rarely, but it can happen, the installed anti-virus software will scan outgoing messages and corrupt the queue thereby causing multiple copies to be sent. The solution here is to tell the anti-virus software not to scan outgoing messages. This can happen to all email programs, such as Outlook Express, so watch for it.
I hope this helps if you are having the Outlook multiple sending receiving email problem. If it does, or even if it doesn’t, I would love to hear from you with your experience.
August 23rd, 2009 at 8:56 pm
The information found here has been tremendously useful and would just like to drop a “Thank you” to the author.
August 25th, 2009 at 4:26 am
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September 2nd, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I was actually looking around for a forum post on this issue, but stumbled across your site on Google!! I’m actually quite interested so will keep an eye out for updates
October 21st, 2009 at 1:05 pm
I tried Microsoft and got no where. Their website limited me in the direction my question wanted to go, so frustrated I googled the topic and it led to your web site. I have done some clean up to ‘sent’ files, organized my wife’s personal folders (and my own as well) and investigated the ideas you listed. Couldn’t find the interval setting in Outlook, but maybe if I stumble around a little in Outlook Help maybe and I mean maybe I’ll get an answer? Thanks you so much for you answers and insight!!! I feel as though I am headed the right direction now. God bless you!
October 22nd, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! I was about to have a computer tech come out and try and fix the problem to my outlook. I am trying your suggestions and hopefully that will cure the problem and I can save over $130 in the process
October 28th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Non of these fix my issue unfortunately which has suddenly arisen yesterday nd happens even with Microsoft’s test email.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Thanks for the tip, it was helpful.